Saturday, June 07, 2008

1. The recent edition of the RBA Mag featured a section on a future time trial bike concept. As the RBA staff looked back at time trial bikes from the last 20 years or so, they were left wondering what the future might hold.

So here's their take on the future, among which are hydraulic disc brakes, integrated everything, electronic shifting and an imaginative internal drinking system for the rider. Take a look...

2. Big thing on the news right now is that Dutch bike maker Koga Miyata has built the ultimate bike for track champion, Theo Bos for his Olympic run. Watch a Reuters based video of the bike here. It costs a little over 580,000 Euros. Since the dollar is sucking bad, if you do the math, that number comes around to 1 million dollars.

Bike with the lowest air resistance in the world??

From what I read, this bike was in the making for 3.5 years or so, during which they ran multiple wind tunnel tests and hired folks who had previously worked on the Ariane 5 Space rocket program. Nothing has been said about the materials in the bike, but my guess is that surely the composite structure might have traces of an exotic additive like Boron (remember Lance's SSlx back in 2006?)

The rubbish piece of news is that "the bike is so stiff it cannot be ridden by anyone but Theo". I don't know where that perpetrated from. Okay, agreed its custom made but leave the other marketing junk out. Let me tell you, even if Theo rode the Olympics on a machine at 1/4th of that cost, he will still win those glorious medals. The man is something else.

Million dollars couldn't afford a new crank...

So of course its a huge waste of money and here's what I think. This bike has the twin objectives of not only satisfying national pride but also injecting a type of psychological warfare on Theo's rivals. The Dutch want the world to know they can back up their star and in style, by putting down everyone else's machine. They lose, he wins, and the company gets a big boost.

3. Aweight comparison between the new Shimano Dura Ace 7900 and the older 7800 group.

All of Shimano's effort only gains 130g of weight loss for the new Dura-Ace gruppo? This is a equivalent to a small cup of yogurt, minus the container. I guess I'll save the $1820 and keep using my old old DA 7800 set-up. Mind you, it seems pretty reasonable compared to a $1 million track bike.

I really liked the multiple modes of heat transfer diagram. I love multi-tasking!

Sprocket : Yep, the weight savings are peanut improvements but I think overall they have taken a holistic approach to improving comfort which is not a bad idea. What I am itching to see is how reliably the electronic shifting works.